The Stone War Read Online Free PDF

wound up downstairs. Sometimes it was talking with Maia. Sometimes Mrs. Harabi on the second floor would hear his footsteps as he went by and come out to the landing to ask something. Often one of the block squatters would stop him as he was coming home, asking a question or making a complaint. Some apologized for taking up his time; others approached aggressively, poised for abrupt dismissal. Tietjen knew most of the squatters on the block by name. He had to stop and listen.
    He took walks when he could, but none as epic as the long walk from Irene’s that night in June. There was never time. In the evenings when he got home late he climbed the stairs to his apartment, zapped something from the noodle shop on Columbus, and leafed through the mail as he pushed the food idly around his plate. If he was still wakeful he’d settle in the armchair by the window and listen for a while to the voices on the street; sometimes he turned off the lights. The light from the streetlamp outside his window squeezed through the slats of his blinds and cast long, bright patterns on the wall. In his sagging leather chair Tietjen would sink lower and lower, head tilted to one side so he could listen, pick out individual voices; gradually the exhaustion of the day would weigh him down so that he could not move. He fell asleep in the chair often, waking at two or three in the morning, just long enough to shuffle into the bedroom, take off his clothes, and fall onto the bed.
    When Chris and Davy went back to school their weekends began to fill with homework and play-dates. Each Saturday the boys were cautiously glad to see him, had stories to tell—and by four o’clock were wondering whether this kid or that one had called about the game or the model or the new homework. Tietjen tried inviting the boys’ friends along, but rather than bringing him further into their lives, the friends seemed to pull the boys further away from him. Each Saturday he brought the boys home to Irene and went back to his apartment to work or read or talk with a neighbor or, as likely, settle into the leather armchair and listen.
    In October his firm got a new commission, a corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility in southeastern Massachusetts. There was the usual infighting among the firm’s designers, all jockeying to lead the design team. The competition for construction architect was less bitter, but plainly most of his coworkers regarded the assignment as a plum. Weeks, months more likely, spent outside the city at the relatively clean, relatively rural site. A big project with the rewards in status and preferment that usually came with big projects.
    “So what’s wrong with it?” Irene asked when he mentioned it to her.
    “For one thing, I wouldn’t be around much on weekends. I wouldn’t see the boys.”
    “They could visit,” she said it as if it were the right thing to say.
    “They’d probably like it.”
    He thought of half a dozen objections—what would kids find to do in Whittendale, Massachusetts, stuck in his hotel room watching satellite TV when he was called back to the site, as he always was on weekends? They’d hate him for it; he wouldn’t be able to do his job properly worrying about the kids. Where would he find someone to stay with them when he wasn’t there?
    Irene was saying something. “ … time you have a job out of town you go through this, John. You know, there are places with flush toilets and electricity all over the country, it’s not like you’d be going to the Kalahari or something.” She stopped and began again. “This project would count for something with the partners, wouldn’t it?”
    He nodded.
    “Then go for it. How else are they going to realize you’re their best project guy?”
    Tietjen smiled at her. It was the closest he’d felt to her in a long time. Still, “But what about the boys?”
    “They have their own lives, John. They’ll be okay. God, these days they hardly know I’m